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Closed 10 years ago.
I'm a user experience designer (not a developer). I'm looking for the right social network software giving me flexibility, performance, usability... and inspiration also.
What's your experience with ELGG, PHPFOX, SOCIALENGINE or similar? What's your favorite platform? Why?
Elgg : You are getting a good framework + free community contributed plugins + free community support. Best opensource social network award winner. Expense to start a basic social network with Elgg : within 50$ (hosting and 1yr domain charge) unless you dont want to have your own specific needs to be implemented on site.
PHPFOX, SOCIAL ENGINE : Commercial solutions, Software, modules and support etc are all commercial. Expense to start a basic social network with PHPFOX, SOCIAL ENGINE : $200+ (software, hosting and domain charge). Advantage : Ready to use software.
The selection depends on your needs, project fund etc.. If you are ready to do a bit of coding / hire a dev for your needs, go with Elgg.
Have developed for both Social Engine 4.x and phpFox 2.x and 3.x. Use phpFox. The updates are more regular and more significant, it's resource usage is remarkably better, and I foresee it being around for longer than SocialEngine, thus, will be easier to obtain support in the future.
While Elgg is free, the $99 you will spend on a basic phpFox package will pay for itself 300 times over the first time you have to pay someone to create an addon that likely already exists for phpFox as it's third party developer community is much larger.
I promise, I don't work for phpFox. I have, however, tried to develop for and maintain a SE4 install and found it to be infuriating. It seems like it was written by three or four people that had little to no contact with each other and if you want sub 2 second page loads, you'll need to run it on a supercomputer at Los Alamos.
Related
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Closed 9 years ago.
How does Drupal's security compare to Plone's?
Note:
It will be great if the comparison includes V.7 for Drupal and V.4 for Plone.
Thanks
There's a good overview of how Plone handles the top 10 security issues in the web app world here:
http://plone.org/products/plone/security/overview
Organizations like the FBI, CIA and European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) all use Plone, if that is an indication.
Plone has the best track record in security of any major CMS, and we take it very seriously. We have an architecture that is built around sandboxing, proper ACLs and a powerful security model.
Drupal has a pretty horrible security record (see the CVE numbers quoted in another comment), as do the other two major PHP-based frameworks (Wordpress and Joomla). Plone is Python-based, but you probably know that already.
Plone makes it easier to write secure add-ons, since we have a proper security model that makes it pretty hard to write code that is inherently insecure. This is different from any other system out there, and is another core differentiator.
(And yes, this answer is biased, I'm one of the founders ;)
The security of the main framework is pretty solid in both cases; the problems are almost always found in the add-on modules, so you need to evaluate each module you plan to use individually.
When searching the "CVE" official common vulnerabilities database, you get the following figures:
Last 3 years: plone 8, drupal 282.
Last 3 months: plone 0, drupal 9
The basic architecture of plone is apparently much more secure. I don't know drupal, actually, but I do know plone. There are no sql injection bugs as there's an non-sql object database behind it. It is a long-running python program, basically, instead of PHP scripts, which makes it easier to have a good solid security mechanism that's harder to break or mis-handle.
(Note: I just did a simple keyword search at http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/search . Not all the results I see for drupal can be attributed to drupal, there seem to be some os-level vulnerabilities that somehow show up in the search results).
It's difficult to compare Plone and Drupal on equal metrics. CVEs is not the end-all comparison, and it's arguable how valuable it even is, as an indication of the relative security of the software. Of those 282 Drupal CVEs, how many were for Drupal core? Not 282.
limi can argue that the architecture is more secure, and point to Plone's response to the OWASP Top Ten. Drupal can do the same. And the "who uses it" argument? Well, whitehouse.gov uses Drupal, as well as a large number of other governmental and "enterprise" organizations.
There are several orders of magnitude more developers using Drupal; the higher numbers of vulnerabilities found can just as easily be attributed to more people bothering to look for them. These stats could easily be security by obscurity.
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Closed 10 years ago.
As the title reads, I'm looking for open source alternatives to balsamiq mockup for prototyping. Anyone knows of an equally good alternative that's open source or basically freeware.
The best available Open source mock up tool is Pencil. Its available as firefox plugin as well as stand alone.
Another solution, which I personally use is Inkscape, an open source SVG Editor. It is NOT a mock up designer, but we can use it for designing mock ups, using freely available stencil kit, like Yahoo Stencil Kit.
Mockingbird is free during beta
Firefox's pencil add-on is free forever
Take a look at Maqetta. It runs as a html5 app in your browser, so you can deploy it on your server to easily share your work with others, or you can simply start it locally and point your browser to localhost on port 50000.
On their homepage, you can test maqetta online (after registering), or download a package that contains everything needed to run it locally.
Resources:
Homepage
Repository on github
WireframeSketcher is not open-source but it's free for open-source developers. WireframeSketcher helps you quickly create wireframes, mockups and prototypes for desktop, web and mobile applications. It comes both as a standalone version and as a plug-in for Eclipse IDEs. It has some distinctive features like storyboards, components, linking and vector PDF export. Among supported IDEs are are Aptana, Flash Builder, Zend Studio and Rational Application Developer.
(source: wireframesketcher.com)
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Closed 10 years ago.
Basically I need to choose one so that, I can get familiar with it quickly and then customize it to my needs.
I'm a .NET developer and know classic ASP too. But I think understanding PHP will not be a problem for me and also think that it won't be that difficult.
What will you like to recommend me?
UPDATE:-
Sorry that I'm adding this info late.
Right now I don't know what customization I will be doing. But I'm sure going forward I will have my own requirement and will need to customize. So I don't want to be in situation where I will have to say "This engine which I'm using will not allow me XYZ change or it will be too difficult for me to make XYZ change in this blogging software, so lets migrate to something else."
I will prefer a short learning curve.
Wordpress is nice, but if you're a .NET developer BlogEngine.NET is extremely easy to extend. The drawback is the much smaller community and resources, but if you're wanting to do some real customization and tweaking, BlogEngine will probably fit your tastes much better. There is a decent development community backing and supporting customization and plugins for BlogEngine, but you'll find that a lot of the information is outdated or maintenance has been forgotten.
If you're wanting something with tons of community widgets, plug-ins and tons of themes, Wordpress is your prime choice without a question. But that's if you're going with the canned solutions. There are a lot of them, and you can still customize them and tweak things, but that's dependent on how comfortable you feel about picking up a new paradigm. Wordpress customization isn't so much PHP development, as it is Wordpress development, since you'll be so deep in Wordpress' own world and API.
Both are available in MS's Web Platform Installer, check them out of your box and play around with them some. It's really going to come down to which one you feel just fits. I've used both for different projects, but I've fallen back on doing my own thing with BlogEngine more than Wordpress. But that's for my own personal stuff.
If you know .NET and C#, facing PHP and mySql is going to feel like you went back to 19th century and have to burn coal in your "car" instead of tanking your beamer at a local gas station :-)
One particularly interesting thing about BlogEngine.NET is that out of the box it will run without SQL Server - just with XML files as a storage. If you know your programming I don't have to tell you what kind of flexibility that provides. Not that I'd recommend actually running a web site for a long time without SQL Server but such dual backing opens some very interesting options.
Should I mention that it comes with Visual Studio sln and proj files? :-) That pretty much means zero learning curve.
Go with Wordpress. It's easily customisable, and there's masses and masses of information on customising it.
Digging into Wordpress
Wordpress docs
Thematic - a Wordpress theme designed to be easily customisable/extensible.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I'm working on deploying a CRM in a University, the software to deploy has to be open source.
My research lead me to SugarCRM Community Edition, however, this edition lack of reporting and seems to be really hard to tailor to specific needs.
thus, i'm considering to use vtiger.
What's your advice, regarding a mid-size project.
Do you recommand to use SugarCRM, Vtiger or another software?
If you are well versed in CSS and can tailor vTiger to look a little better, then it might be a viable solution for you.
However, I would personally highly recommend SugarCRM. It is much easier to maintain and has a much larger community. Plus, you can look into the Enhanced Search Plugin, The Kinamu Reporting tool and the Zucker reports plugin to help fulfill your needs for a reporting tool. However, they are both free. I would just download them both and check into the free plugins on sugarforge and then base my decision on your findings there.
Hope this helps!
I would also recommend sugarCRM because of the larger community and availability of third party plug ins, having worked with both i can say that sugarCRM's studio gives you a bit more flexibility. There are also many plug ins; I would recomend the ModernAqua theme to improve look and feel.
I'll give you a warning however, sugarCRM is not always nice to work with. Its code is poorly documented and maintainance is a big hastle. upgrading with custom code is still error prone through version 6.x despite what they say and changes will be overwritten by the module builder.
So in short, go with Sugar but think carefully before customizing it too much because it can be a pain to maintain.
Unlike others, I am recommending vtiger CRM. The community with vtiger isn't small and if you are a true OpenSource lover then you should definitely use vtiger as it comes with no commercial version etc.
There is a number of available modules in the exchange available at vTiger. Also, a number of mobile apps etc are available too.
CSS proficiency? I don't think that is required at all. We are using vtiger out of the box and the look and feel is as good as you need. There is MailChimp integration etc available too if you are into marketing automation.
Its better to use SugarCRM Professional Edition. In this already Report Module is in Built
Thanks
I recommend SugarCRM too. Vtiger has a much smaller community and for Sugar there are modules available for almost any scenario.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I am currently looking at a distributed cache solution.
If money was not an issue, which would you recommend?
www.scaleoutsoftware.com
ncache
memcacheddotnet
MS Velocity
Out of your selection I've only ever attempted to use memcached, and even then it wasn't the C#/.NET libraries.
However memcached technology is fairly well proven, just look at the sites that use it:
...The system is used by several very large, well-known sites including YouTube, LiveJournal, Slashdot, Wikipedia, SourceForge, ShowClix, GameFAQs, Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Fotolog, BoardGameGeek, NYTimes.com, deviantART, Jamendo, Kayak, VxV, ThePirateBay and Netlog.
I don't really see a reason to look at the other solution's.
Good Luck,
Brian G.
One thing that people typically forget when evaluating solutions is dedicated support.
If you go with memcached then you'll get none, because you're using completely open source software that is not backed by any vendor. Yes, the core platform is well tested by virtue of age, but the C# client libraries are probably much less so. And yes, you'll probably get some help on forums and the like, but there is no guarantee responses will be fast, and no guarantee you'll get any responses at all.
I don't know what the support for NCache or the ScaleOut cache is like, but it's something that's worth finding out before choosing them. I've dealt with many companies for support over the last few years and the support is often outsourced to people who don't even work at the company (with no chance of getting to the people who do) and this means no chance of getting quality of timely support. On the other hand I've also dealt with companies who'll escalate serious issues to the right people, fix important issues very fast, and ship you a personal patch.
One of those companies is Microsoft, which is one of the reasons that we use their software as our platform. If you have a production issue, then you can rely on their support. So my inclination would be to go with Velocity largely on this basis.
Possible the most important thing though, whichever cache you choose, is to abstract it behind your own interface (e.g. ICache) which will allow you to evaluate a number of them without holding up the rest of the development process. This means that even if your initial decision turns out not to work for you, you can switch it without breaking much of the application.
(Note: I'm assuming here that all caches have sufficient features to support what you need from them, and that all caches have sufficient and broadly similar performance. This may not be a valid assumption, in which case you'll need to provide more detail in your question as to why it isn't).
You could also add Oracle Coherence to your list. It has both .NET and Java APIs.
From microsoft : App fabric
Commerical : NCache
Open source : RIAK
We tried a couple in the end we use the SQL session provider for asp.net/mvc yes there is the overhead of the connection to the DB but our DB server is very fast and the web farm has loads of capacity so not an issue.
Very interested in RIAK has .net client and used by Yahoo - can be scaled to many manu server